RAILWAYS

287

so that at the Karachi Club one may meet men of most of
the Western nationalities, just as in the streets of Karachi
city one may find men of as varied Eastern origin. But
Karachi possesses little of oriental attraction. To many
of its European commercial inhabitants the cantonment
limits bound the horizon of India. They never pass that
horizon, but spend the best part of a laborious existence
in anxious anticipation of that happy time when they can
again recross the seas.
Leaving the dry, warm atmosphere of Karachi (an
atmosphere which is more dry than that of Bombay and
more warm than that of the Punjab) by the evening mail,
the traveller loses much of
the interest of Sind during
the night hours, when he
will probably (if he is well
advised) be asleep. He will
still have the opportunity of
studying the idiosyncrasies
of the Sindi, however, before
 he reaches Ruk, the
junction for Quetta. At
Ruk he will find the neatly
clothed and gaudily hatted
merchant of Sind giving place to the turbaned Punjabi
and the greasy, ringletted, Baluchi, the voluminous folds
of whose dress are usually held together by a strap supporting
 his little round shield, and a belt which becomes
a small armoury whenever he is permitted to carry arms.
There is not the least affinity between the Baluchi and
the man of Sind. No Frenchman and German standing
together on the same platform of a European railway
station could be farther apart in all national proclivities
than these two, although both acknowledge the representative
 of the same /ex Britannica in the person of the bluecoated
 and yellow-trousered Punjabi policeman.
From the hot and dusty station of Ruk the branch
3ind-Peshin railway strikes across the hot and dusty
Jesert of Kach Gandava, first passing the outlying station